Monday, July 30, 2012

Strong summer thunderstorms that pump water high into the upper
atmosphere pose a threat to the protective ozone layer over the United
States, researchers said on Thursday, drawing one of the first links
between climate change and ozone loss over populated areas.

The observed presence of water vapor convectively injected deep into the
stratosphere over the United States fundamentally
changes the catalytic chlorine/bromine free
radical chemistry of the lower stratosphere by shifting total available
inorganic
chlorine into the catalytically active
free-radical form, ClO. This chemical shift markedly affects total ozone
loss rates
and makes the catalytic system extraordinarily
sensitive to convective injection into the mid-latitude lower
stratosphere
in summer. Were the intensity and frequency of
convective injection to increase as a result of climate forcing by the
continued
addition of CO2 and CH4 to the atmosphere, increased risk of ozone loss and associated increases in UV dosage would follow.

The questions this study poses raises are:

* Will stronger storms, one expected effect of global warming, seriously damage the ozone layer above the United States or other temperate or tropical regions?
* If so, how much damage?
* If the damage is serious, how much skin cancer for humans and animals? How much DNA damage to plants?

You can be certain that the final toll, whatever it is, is not factored in to any of the cost/benefit analyses of cutting greenhouse gas emissions. And you can be reasonably confident that "unintended consequences" like this will continue to bubble to the surface if, in less than an eyeblink of geologic time, we transform the Earth's climate into something last seen when dinosaurs roamed.

Nature is dangerous and powerful; that has not and will not change. But in the last 13,000 years of human history, humans have learned a great many of nature's dirty tricks and we have built a civilization around outwitting them. We help been helped in this by 8,000 years of extreme climate stability. All of our experience as a civilization, the some total of recorded history, all that we have managed to do in fostering health and prosperity in the teeth of indifferent nature have come during that flat line of global climatic stability.

Now we are changing the game to a game we've never played before and don't know the rules of. We are charging into the realm of the unknown unknowns, and even if we were to do everything right from this point, the coming centuries would be full of monsters of our own creation.

The links on the right-hand side have gotten a little sloppy and out of date; I've commenced shaping them up. Things that looked good but updated rarely to never will be out; some great blogs like Dosbat and Quark Soup that mysteriously vanished from the blog roll have been re-added; rocking newcomers (to this blog) like arctic.io are creeping in.

Sunday, July 29, 2012

He didn't stop there, but went on to effusively praise the entire operation at BEST and the people involved:

Brillinger, another affable Canadian from Toronto, with an office
covered in posters to remind him of his roots, has not even a hint of
the arrogance and advance certainty that we’ve seen from people like Dr.
Kevin Trenberth. He’s much more like Steve McIntyre in his demeanor and
approach. In fact, the entire team seems dedicated to providing an open source, fully transparent, and replicable method no matter whether their new metric shows a trend of warming, cooling, or no trend at all,
which is how it should be. I’ve seen some of the methodology, and I’m
pleased to say that their design handles many of the issues skeptics
have raised and has done so in ways that are unique to the problem.
Mind you, these scientists at LBNL (Lawrence Berkeley National Labs)
are used to working with huge particle accelerator datasets to find
minute signals in the midst of seas of noise. Another person on the
team, Dr. Robert Jacobsen,
is an expert in analysis of large data sets. His expertise in managing
reams of noisy data is being applied to the problem of the very noisy
and very sporadic station data. The approaches that I’ve seen during my
visit give me far more confidence than the “homogenization solves all”
claims from NOAA and NASA GISS, and that the BEST result will be closer
to the ground truth that anything we’ve seen.

Now we have the results:

. . . and Tony's planning a big announcement. We'll see if he plans to live by those words, or eat them.

Saturday, July 28, 2012

CALL me a converted skeptic. Three years ago I identified problems in
previous climate studies that, in my mind, threw doubt on the very
existence of global warming. Last year, following an intensive research
effort involving a dozen scientists, I concluded that global warming was
real and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct.
I’m now going a step further: Humans are almost entirely the cause.

It's nothing spectacular, as conversion experiences go, more of a dry reciting of of the basic points of the IPCC assessment, with more confidence that the earlier warming, from 1850 to 1970, was probably human-caused as well.

He even touched upon the Great Heresy:

Science is that narrow realm of knowledge that, in principle, is
universally accepted. I embarked on this analysis to answer questions
that, to my mind, had not been answered. I hope that the Berkeley Earth
analysis will help settle the scientific debate regarding global warming
and its human causes. Then comes the difficult part: agreeing across
the political and diplomatic spectrum about what can and should be done.

This is why the denial machine tolerates the hits to its credibility when its fake "experts" are outed. Actual scientists bring gravitas to the enterprise, but they are a little . . . politically unreliable.

Tuesday, July 17, 2012

The melting news is not good. First there is the volume of the Arctic sea ice, which has hit a record low for the third year running. Knowing the powerful influence of local weather conditions on the Arctic sea ice, the steady fall is surprising. The warming-driven melt signal is overpowering the year-to-year variations.

And then there's Greenland.

Smack dab in the middle of high convection cell, hotter than Hades (for them). And because slightly distressed snow is a lot darker than fresh/never melted snow, the overall albedo of the entire ice sheet is shifting in the direction of more heat absorption and even more melting:

Like most real science, the excitement of the press-release-worthy findings is somewhat mitigated by the boring necessity of having other scientists examine the findings, confirm the findings, etc. Some of the interesting stuff in the record, though, is as follows:

1. There seem to be large climate swings in the record which are far too large to be explained by orbital changes or any other known natural forcing. While this will doubtless be trumpeted by the "science knows nothing crowd," this result, if it holds up, would imply positive feedbacks in the climate system so powerful and exquisitely sensitive that they dwarf the original positive forcing. My sense of the recent literature has been that the most likely suspect for those feedbacks would be the carbon cycle (permafrost, changes in soil respiration, methyl hydrates, etc.) The authors of this study think that's not enough -- see #3, below.

2. The Arctic and Antarctic climates are linked. They tend to warm together and cool together.

First, they say, reduced glacial ice cover and loss of ice shelves in
Antarctica could have limited formation of cold bottom water masses that
flow into the North Pacific Ocean and upwell to the surface, resulting
in warmer surface waters, higher temperatures and increased
precipitation on land.

Alternatively, disintegration of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet may have
led to significant global sea level rise and allowed more warm surface
water to reach the Arctic Ocean through the Bering Strait.

Lake E's past, say the researchers, could be the key to our global climate future.

4. The loss of ice from Greenland in Antarctica is likely to accelerate (gee, really?)

Shakun
et al. find that at the end of the last ice age temperature increased
immediately in the Arctic but only slightly, probably as a result of
increased radiation during the northern hemisphere summer. As a result a
small portion of the Arctic ice melted. The melt water had a lower salt
concentration and thus was less dense than the surface water and sank
although mostly not to great depths. The result was that the AMOC and
thus the associated redistribution of heat between the Arctic and the
tropics was interrupted. This meant that the temperature in the high
northern latitudes no longer rose, but may, in fact, have even decreased
slightly. This is exactly what was found in the data. As a result, the
temperature rose in the southern tropics and then the southern temperate
latitudes and finally in Antarctica. Only then did the data show an
increase in CO2. So somehow warming of the southern latitudes leads to increased emissions of CO2.
Simultaneous determination of the isotopic ratio (for example,
according to RF Anderson, S. Ali, LI Bradtmiller, SHH Nielsen, MQ
Fleisher, BE Anderson, and LH Burckle, Wind-Driven Upwelling in the
Southern Ocean and the Deglacial Rise in Atmospheric CO2, Science, 323 , 1443-1448 (2009).) suggests that the CO2 source
is a consequence of biological fixation of carbon residues, for example
in plankton deposited on the ocean floor. This increase in CO2 concentration is more than twice as strong as expected from outgassing of CO2
from warmer sea water alone. It indicates that the exchange with the
Southern Ocean deep water became more intense and carbon deposits were
transferred from the depths to the surface. Only after a significant
temperature increase in the south and an increase in CO2
concentration, did the temperature rise again in the northern
hemisphere. This is interpreted as providing a feedback mechanism for
for greenhouse gases to drive global warming.

What if we put that together with the "Lake E" speculations? To wit:

First, they say, reduced glacial ice cover and loss of ice shelves in
Antarctica could have limited formation of cold bottom water masses that
flow into the North Pacific Ocean and upwell to the surface, resulting
in warmer surface waters, higher temperatures and increased
precipitation on land.

Alternatively, disintegration of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet may have
led to significant global sea level rise and allowed more warm surface
water to reach the Arctic Ocean through the Bering Strait.

Lake E's past, say the researchers, could be the key to our global climate future.

So I tell myself the story: a slight change in solar forcing heats the North, which interrupts warm ocean currents, causing the South to heat. Ice sheets collapse, southern ocean currents change, and by some combination of unearthing plankton carbon, rising sea levels, and/or changing ocean currents, the North warms further, and more greenhouse gases are released.

Interesting story. Warming gets passed back and forth from North to South, until from modest beginnings you have a climate warmer than the present day. So what happens if, instead of a tiny tap on the Northern latitudes with a modest increase in insolation, you instead hammer the entire planet from stem to stern with a massive greenhouse gas forcing? We're about to find out.

Mostly this is stuff that is not news to regular readers; snow and ice are melting faster and faster. The loss of ice and snow is a positive feedback that leads to further warming. Permafrost is melting, releasing more carbon (we don't know how much yet). Greenland will melt faster and faster, but nobody knows how fast yet.

Monday, July 16, 2012

I have been doing this for a fair bit of time now (300th post!), and one of the interesting things about climate denial is that it is really just a special case of science denial, which in turn is a noble constellation in the wider universe of conspiracy theories. Science denial uses certain fallacies and appeals to emotion in predictable ways. Whether the subject is global climate change or breastfeeding infants, the same tropes proliferate.

The risk of hospitalization for lower respiratory tract infections in the first year
is reduced 72% if infants are breastfed
exclusively for more than 4 months.
However, infants who exclusively breast-
feed for 4 to 6 months have a fourfold
increase in the risk of pneumonia com-
pared with infants who exclusively
breastfeed for more than 6 months.
Exclusive breastfeeding for more than
3 months reduces the incidence of
otitis media by 50%. Serious colds and
ear and throat infections are reduced
by 63% in infants who exclusively
breastfeed for 6 months.
Any breastfeeding is associated with
a 64% reduction in the incidence of
nonspecific gastrointestinal tract infections, and this effect lasts for 2 months
after cessation of breastfeeding.
A reduction in leukemia is correlated
with the duration of breastfeeding—
acute lymphocytic leukemia is reduced
by 20%, and acute myeloid leukemia is
reduced by 15% in infants breastfed
for 6 months or longer.

Long-term health outcomes are affected by duration and/or presence of
breastfeeding in infancy. The incidence
of type 1 diabetes is reduced 30% in
infants exclusively breastfed for at
least 3 months. A reduction of 40% in
type 2 diabetes also is reported, possibly reflecting the long-term positive
effect of breastfeeding on weight control and feeding self-regulation. Celiac
disease is reduced 52% in infants who
were breastfed at the time of gluten
exposure.

So, breastfeeding is optimal, although in any given case, it may be necessary to supplement with formula or formula-feed exclusively. Some mothers can't breastfeed, or have health problems or take medications (like seizure medications) that make it a bad idea. Society often does not support mothers who need to breastfeed or pump. But when babies can get breast milk, they are healthier.

Such are the facts. But Ms. Quart downplays facts, and emphasizes her feelings, which she takes to be deliberately provoked by others:

MY daughter was 2 days old, and dropping weight. I had been trying to
feed her, but for some reason she wasn’t yet getting the liquid gold of
colostrum, the earliest mother’s milk. When the hospital’s doctor paid
his daily visit and mentioned her weight, my husband asked whether we
should supplement with formula, gesturing at the little Similac bottles
of hospital swag with the desperation of a business traveler eyeing
vodka in the minibar — and with much of the same shame. The pediatrician
swiftly confirmed our fears, intoning, “Formula is evil.” He was
implying we were quasi-negligent for even considering it.

First we have a worry stemming from not knowing as much as she thinks she does: two-day-olds are supposed to be losing weight. Newborns lose weight for the first week of life; it's the way they're built. Nothing abnormal about that at all.

The physician, in colorful language, condemns formula, though he apparently mistook his audience for people with a sense of humor (I have often made the same mistake) or he would not have called formula "evil." Nevertheless, the author's sense of being deliberately judged is over the top: "He was
implying we were quasi-negligent for even considering it."

If you don’t drink the Koolaid, you are
committing crimes against nature or you are a racist or a terrorist.
Guilty on all counts!

Jim is actually talking about climate denial, not breastfeeding, but the sense of paranoia is the same. What is lost is the sense of the facts as facts that have to be dealt with. Instead the author focuses on how those facts make her feel. She tries to invoke a sense of being threatened and belittled; the power of those emotions, if she can persuade her readers to share them, will dwarf any impression the scientific evidence can make.

Nevertheless, fewer than half of American babies are breast-fed for six
months. I understand why. Breast-feeding exclusively for the first year
is just not feasible for many women, who sometimes get six weeks of paid
maternity leave but often get none. Choosing formula as a supplement is
reasonable, given this reality. Yet, however worthwhile nursing may be,
the heightened pressure to breast-feed creates shame in those who don’t
manage to do it, and today’s lactation rhetoric erroneously implies
that nursing is the most crucial thing you can do for your infant’s
welfare.

After invoking the "shame," now it's time for the straw man: "lactation rhetoric." It's so overstated and overblown. Did you know they say nursing is the most crucial thing you can do for your infant's welfare? Who are "they"? The lactation rhetoricians, of course.

And you can probably find this point of view expressed somewhere online. Not by the American Academy of Pediatrics, though; they know better. Breastfeeding is a good thing for a child's health, but if you ask a doctor who cares for kids what the most crucial thing you can do for a child's welfare, I think most of them would say "don't shake the kid." (Now, if they look you up and down and say "birth control," that would be an example of a doctor that doesn't think well of you.)

After the straw man, the science denier usually feels they need to offer some explanation for why people are deluded enough to belief differently than she does. Whether it's the "Socialist World State" or "rent-seeking scientists," there needs to be a reason why the other side exists and has gone to the great trouble of confusing the public about it:

The current fascination with breast-feeding is also an extension of a
society’s efforts to control risk, including risk to our children.
Mandatory, exclusive breast-feeding is, in this thinking, a kind of
harm-reduction or abatement. It’s part of a collective dream of reducing
all danger to nil. It’s also fueled by an idealization of the natural
in a world that is ever more artificial.

I tend to think cutting your child's risk of getting diabetes by a third and cutting their risk of ear infections in half is objectively pretty awesome, but doubtless this is because I am "idealiz[ing] the natural world."

As so often, there's a conversion story in which the unhappy believer (in breastfeeding) finds an online authority and is transformed into a happy skeptic:

I discovered Dr. Amy Tuteur, whose site is called The Skeptical OB.
She worked for seven years as an obstetrician and gynecologist, some of
that time at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, then quit in the
mid-1990s to raise four children. On her site, which she says draws
about a million visitors a year, she attacks the new nursing and birth
orthodoxies among upper-middle-class women. Among some online, she is
more despised than the Tiger Mom. (Recently there was a critical article
about her on Slate.) “We’ve moralized breast-feeding,” she told me when
I met her for an interview. She argued that it is less important than
its advocates claim. She cited a 2008 study in the journal Pediatrics,
in which the authors concluded there was no “evidence of risks or
benefits of prolonged and exclusive breast-feeding for child and
maternal behavior.”

The joy of finding an "expert" on the side of the issue one has already invested in! The "skeptic" so suspicious of arguments from authority, is suddenly star-struck by her expert and her one study, which doesn't really say what she thinks it does.

Ms. Quart, Lomborg-like, does not go so far as to pretend breastfeeding
is not best. Instead, she uses her straw man to argue that the stress
laid on breastfeeding is hysterical and overblown, which comes about
because people are idealizing the natural world and trying to reduce
risks to zero. But the most critical move is actually the very first
one: by invoking the reader's sense of guilt and shame, and arguing
"they" are deliberately and maliciously trying to provoke these
feelings, the denier prepares the audience to swallow the rest of the
story. Because who are you going to believe, this nice lady who
understands how hard it is to be a mother, or those assholes that made
her feel guilty (or ignorant, or afraid)?

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

The extreme heat and drought in the US have cast doubt on the corn harvest, abruptly driving up prices. A useful reminder that, while the continental US comprises only 1.5% of the Earth's surface, we produce 10% of the world's wheat and 20% of the globe's beef,
pork, and lamb. And last but not least -- fully half of the world's corn crop, which is America's single bestselling crop.

So this little spot of warm weather we've been having has serious potential consequences for food security around the globe. Which is the problem of global warming in microcosm; it would never be a good idea to radically alter the world's climate to something hotter than any time since we came down to from the trees. But to do so at a time when seven billion people are depending on a complex, interdependent global economic system -- a delicate clockwork mechanism to which we are applying a sledgehammer of abrupt, radial warming -- that is a special kind of idiocy. And we will all pay a price for it.

Not only does is give good Colbert, there are chats with the Navy's chief oceanographer and an executive and Munich Re -- which has been warming its shareholder about the impact of global warming since 1973.

1. “Subject: Kill yourself scum
Fuck you for your lies and deceit. You deserve to die. And if you
don’t take your own life, I fucking hope somebody does it for you.”

2. “Your children and family will know because we know where you live. expect us at your door to say hello ^\-(”

3. “Faggots like you will be dealt with, as now people know what you
need and will beat the living shit out of you every time you show your
socialist ass in public. I’d kill you in a second if given the chance. .
. . I’m now going to take physical action against you. You deserve it
you fucking prick!”

4. "If anyone of those perverted assholes ever steps within the boundries of the U.S., they decimated [sic]. We have 2nd amendment [sic] and you as a stupid Briton probably don't know what that means. We have a right to bear arms and these perverted assholes will be wasted. We will have plans for you as well. If you bring your family all the merrier.

5. "Keep this in mind. Not all will tolerate your thieving lying ways when it impacts their family.

Beware of retribution upon yours.

Someone some where [sic] will hurt you down."

6. "wanker you wanker you nead [sic] to be killed"

7. "i [sic] hope you fuckers die slowly and painfully.

you are the scum of the earth and should be put in front of a firing squad."

8. "update your google search, it should say, widely known group of cocksuckers and liars that tried to enslave the world through a huge scam perpetrated by a bunck of fuckin cocksuckers, if was i charge [sic] you would all be lined up againt [sic] a wall and shot."
----------------------

So what is the significance of this, besides telling us something important about the character about a certain group of "climate skeptics"?

I think it puts the question to people like Judith Curry and Roy Spencer, who still have a foot in the world of science, but derive much of their hit counts and claim to public notice from "climate skeptics" who regularly air similar paranoid ideas and abusive language in their comment threads.

Let me be clear; I am not calling for them to moderate with a heavier hand. What I am saying is that if you put yourself at the head of a mob waving pitchforks and torches, you have some responsibility for the kind of people who take you as an inspiration. I have no hope for people like Anthony Watts, who is merely a "shock jock" of the internet. But I would like to see more grown-up climate deniers and lukewarmers taking pains to isolate and marginalize the violent, paranoid, homophobic and neofacisist elements of their fellow travellers. If they and other vocal opponents of strong mitigation cannot grow up, as a movement, enough to denounce their bigots and terrorists, then they and their movement will be defined as a movement of bigots and terrorists in the public mind, and deserve to be.

Saturday, July 7, 2012

As Garth notes, it is therefore not surprising then, that “it is indeed vastly more difficult to publish results in climate research journals if they run against the tide ofpolitically correct opinion” (in reality) a fully demonstrated understanding of current climate science. “Which
is why most of the sceptic literature on the subject has been forced
onto the web, and particularly onto web-logs devoted to the sceptic view
of things.”

Why would anyone want stuff that is patently erroneous, irrelevant,
or otherwise deficient to be published in the long-established climate
science literature? Clearly, there has to be some sense of quality
control to define what we reliably understand in science, and what we
don’t. Why not just trash out the junky stuff in the web-blogs where
that is already happening? Should anything of value be uncovered, it
will surely survive the thrashing, and then it will make it into the
peer-reviewed climate science literature and become recognized as a
recognized part of current climate knowledge.

As I like to remind people "ignorance on your part does not constitute an obligation on my part."

Friday, July 6, 2012

You heard right; our favorite short-term temperature driver, fresh off a rare double-dip into the (comparably) frigid La Nina regime, is now charging into El Nino:

The official definition of El Nino is (roughly in plain English) that a temperature index called Nino 3.4 becomes greater than +0.5C and stays there for several months. The last El Nino episode ended in May 2010, over two years ago. We won't know for sure if we have another El Nino for several months, but, as of Monday, we have taken the first step: Nino 3.4 hit +0.6C.

The forecast indices used by NOAA, which until recently were projecting ENSO-neutral conditions through the spring of 2013, are now all coming up "hot times ahead."

What does all this mean? Well, if coupled with a little less anemic job market, it may be an opportunity to refocus the public's attention on the climate. More immediately, well . . .

Summer is barely two weeks old and two-thirds of the country is in the
grip of a severe drought. More crops will die. More forests will burn.
More power brokers will become familiar with the consequences of a
derecho. It sounds biblical, but smart scientists have been predicting
this very cycle.

Read the whole article (NYT). This exceptionally bad beginning to the fire season -- which has already destroyed 346 homes in Colorado Waldo Canyon fire alone, and an additional 259 homes in the High Park fire, a total of more than 600 homes in Colorado in the first few weeks of summer -- is down to dry conditions likely related to the recent La Nina coupled with global warming. Hot and dry is a bad combination.

Thursday, July 5, 2012

So, for each person who might die from global warming, about 210 people die from health problems that result from a lack of clean water and sanitation,
from breathing smoke generated by burning dirty fuels (such as dried
animal dung) indoors, and from breathing polluted air outdoors.

By focusing on measures to prevent global warming, the advanced
countries might help to prevent many people from dying. That sounds good
until you realize that it means that 210 times as many people in poorer
countries might die needlessly as a result—because the resources that
could have saved them were spent on windmills, solar panels, biofuels, and other rich-world fixations.

Before we proceed to the problems with this argument, let's have a moment of silence for all the brains cells that have died confronting the superlative illogic of Lomborgianism.

Can I briefly take note of the top five ways that argument self-destructs? To wit:

1. The concept that we should ignore a deadly, destructive, expensive threat because there is some greater threat to human welfare somewhere in the world is a particularly rank fallacy of smug commentary. Presumably it would implied ignoring highway safety as long as more people are dying of cancer, and ignoring the 9/11 attacks as long as people are dying of highway accidents.

Taken to its logical extreme, the ignore-this-problem-there-are-bigger-ones fallacy leads to a world where we are all working with all our strength on one and only one issue -- presumably something to do with Africa -- whilst drunken unseatbelted teenagers smash into guardrails, Colorado burns unchecked, and AIDS sweeps through our cities without an antiretroviral medication in sight.

2. Anybody notice that while comparing the size of problems, Lomborg is comparing global warming to three other major environmental issues combined?

"So, for each person who might die from global warming, about 210 people die from health problems that result from a lack of clean water and sanitation,
from breathing smoke generated by burning dirty fuels (such as dried
animal dung) indoors, and from breathing polluted air outdoors."

This a stupid game, this which-issue-is-bigger crap, but if you are going to compare the relative size and importance of issues, don't you need to compare one issue to one other issue? The approach Lomborg takes here is like asking yourself: Am I obese? And answering: "Certainly not; I weigh significantly less than my three closest friends combined!"

3. Not content with this wildly inappropriate assertion, Lomborg doubles down on crazy by asserting that not only is indoor air pollution (plus water pollution plus outdoor air pollution) a bigger deal than global warming, if we stopped wasting time on global warming, no one would die of indoor air pollution (plus water pollution plus outdoor air pollution) ever again. Everyone who suffers from these ills "die[s] needlessly" because of "rich-world fixations."

Wrap your mind around that one: we are supposed to believe that the tentative and uncoordinated efforts to address climate change -- on which the world spends far less than a penny of every dollar it makes -- are depleting the world of all the resources it would need to insure no one dies of air or water pollution every again. Pristine sewers will serve a billion new toilets. Cooking fires will vanish from the world. Every industry in every country around the world will completely end the production of toxic wastes that inevitably end up in our water and our air. We won't burn coal any longer -- wait, what? Leading me to . . .

4. Reducing air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions are not competing objections. The most direct and effective solution to both is to burn less fossil fuels (2), which are the primary source of indoor and outdoor air pollution.

To present these issues as competing with one another is nonsense. That's like saying the rich world's fixation with preventing lung cancer is distracting us from the important work of preventing emphysema.

Burning fossil fuels, especially coal and gasoline, is also an important source of water pollution. Just like quitting smoking cuts your risk both of getting lung cancer and developing emphysema, low-carbon energy sources and greater efficiency also reduce air and water pollution.

5. Even if these were two (OK, four) separate problems, which they are not, the way Lomborg has carried out his calculation of 210:1 doesn't stand up to the most causal scrutiny.

Global warming is by no means our main environmental threat. Even if we assumed—unreasonably—that it caused all
deaths from floods, droughts, heat waves, and storms, this total would
amount to just 0.06 percent of all deaths in developing countries. In
comparison, 13 percent of all Third World deaths result from water and
air pollution.

Does Lomborg really think we are dumb enough to buy the idea that the only way global warming can kill you is if you are struck by a giant tidal wave or struck by lighting? What about something simpler like falling agricultural yields:

John Hawkins, a spokesman for the Illinois Farm Bureau, said those in
the southernmost sections of his state “are close to or past that point
of no return,” while elsewhere, “there’s a lot of praying; it’s hanging
on by a thread.”

“These 100-degree temperatures are just sucking the life out of everything,” he said.

But that's not even the worst of this bogus comparison; stay tuned for part two.

--------------------
1. For those who don't know Dr. Lomborg, he is the author of "The Skeptical Environmentalist," by which he refers to himself, although he is neither an environmentalist nor a skeptic. This book was cited by the Danish Committees on Scientific Dishonesty (I want one of those for our American "skeptics") for: